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The Pittsburgh Steelers were founded in 1933. Over
the course of the team's history, the team has had several logos
while wearing virtually the same uniforms over the years, with
subtle changes made to give the uniforms an updated look. The team
colors, uniforms, and logo are often ranked as being among the best
in the NFL.[1]

Contents

Colors

The Steelers have used black
and gold as their
colors since the club's inception, the lone exception being the
1943 season when they merged with the Philadelphia Eagles and formed the
"Steagles"; the team's
colors at that time were green and white as a result of wearing
Eagles uniforms. Originally, the team wore solid gold-colored
helmets and black jerseys. Unique to Pittsburgh, the Steelers'
black and gold colors are now shared by all major professional
teams in the city, including the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball and
the Pittsburgh Penguins in hockey.
These also are the colors of the city's official
flag.

Logo

The Steelers have had several logos in the early part of their
history, among them including the crest of Pittsburgh, a football with
Pittsburgh's then-smoggy skyline,
as well as a construction worker hanging onto a
chain holding a pennant.
Another logo showed the worker punting a football on a steel beam.
It is rumored that controversial mascot Steely McBeam was
based on the latter logo.[2]

Since the 1960s, the team has used a stencil
typeface for their script logo. Since then, many team-related
typefaces have used stencil font.

The team's current primary logo was introduced in 1962 and is
based on the "Steelmark," originally designed by
Pittsburgh's U.S.
Steel and now owned by the American Iron and Steel
Institute (AISI). In fact, it was Cleveland-based Republic Steel
that suggested the Steelers adopt the industry logo. It consists of
the word "Steelers" surrounded by three astroids (hypocycloids of four cusps).
The original meanings behind the astroids were, "Steel lightens
your work, brightens your leisure, and widens your world." Later,
the colors came to represent the ingredients used in the
steel-making process: yellow for coal, orange for iron ore, and
blue for scrap steel.[3] While
the formal Steelmark logo contains only the word "Steel," the team
was given permission to add "ers" in 1963 after a petition against
AISI.

While the logo still resembles the original Steelmark logo, the
team has made subtle changes over the years in order to own a trademark on the logo, most
notably making the three astroids thicker in shape and changing the
orange astroid to red. The Steelmark logo itself has actually been
heavily redesigned since then, using two variants, one of which
uses a more modern design and uses three shades of blue for the
astroids[4] while
another one used concurrently has a strong resemblance to the recycling
symbol. One alternate variation the team used in the
1980s—though rarely used today—combined the logo with the team's
signature stencil-script typeface, replacing the regular "Steelers"
typeface used with the team's longtime script logo.

Helmets

The Steelers are the only NFL team that puts its logo on only
one side of the helmet (the right side). Longtime field and
equipment manager Jack Hart was instructed to do this by Art Rooney
as a test to see how the logo appeared on the gold helmets;
however, its popularity led the team to leave it that way
permanently.[5] A year
after introducing the logo, they switched to black helmets to make
it stand out more. In 1977, the Steelers switched facemask colors
from gray to black.

Another feature of the helmets is that a player's number appears
on both the front and back (the Steelers are one of only two teams
in the NFL to do this, the other being the New York
Giants). The numbers traditionally do not appear on the helmet
fronts during the exhibition season, and also do not appear on the
front of the throwback helmets.

Uniforms

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Early
years

The Steelers have made only a few changes to their jerseys over
the years. Originally, the team had vertically-striped jerseys that
resembled prison uniforms at
the time, with some variations having the city of Pittsburgh crest
on the front, a la NHL uniforms. The team would
later wear these uniforms as throwbacks in 1994.

The team adopted more standard NFL uniforms in 1936 and added
Northwestern striping to the sleeves, and with the team finishing
0.500 for the first time in team history that season (at 6–6), the
stripes have largely remained on the uniforms since. The striping
pattern is named for Northwestern University, the
college that is believed to have originated the pattern.[6]

One exception that the stripes were omitted prior to the 1960s
was from the aforementioned "Steagles" season because the team wore
the Eagles uniforms as a cost-saving measure. The Eagles' jerseys
at the time were green with white shoulders and no stripes. The
Rooneys have acknowledged that because the combined team wore the
Eagles uniforms that year, it is the only time in team history that
the colors were something other than black & gold.

Two white
jerseys

Due to uniform experimentation in the 1960s, on two separare
occasions the team's stripes were omitted. The first time came in
1962, when the Steelers
began to wear two types of white jerseys, one of which featured a
gold diamond on the sleeves in place of the stripes, with the "TV
numbers" situated on the diamonds. These jerseys were primarily
worn in home games when the team didn't wear their black jerseys,
since the NFL at the time was encouraging teams to wear white
jerseys so fans could see the team colors of their opponents.

The other jersey featured gold sleeves and a black version of
the stripes, and were worn in road games when the home team elected
to wear their colored jerseys. The team continued this way through
the 1965 season.

Caped
Crusaders

The Steelers' "Batman"-style uniforms the team
experimented with in 1966-1967.

Perhaps the most infamous uniforms the team has ever worn came
in 1966, when the team
experimented with the "Batman"-themed uniforms, named as
such because they were similar to the Batman outfits Adam West wore on the
popular TV series. The jersey had no stripes on either the black or
white jerseys and had a gold triangle-like diamond covering the
shoulders.

Although they have been commonly called the "Batman" uniforms,
Dan Rooney later made
public his reasoning behind the uniforms. With his father still running
the team and the Vince Lombardi-led Green Bay
Packers being the class of the NFL, the younger Rooney (who
still had a much smaller role with the team at the time) didn't
want to follow the lead of other NFL teams trying to copy the
Packers and wanted the Steelers to have a more unique look.[7]
Coinciding with this was the development of the Golden
Triangle in the city of Pittsburgh in the 1960s, so Rooney
decided to give the uniforms a connection to the growing downtown
district with the gold triangle-like diamond.

Although both Rooney and NFL Films'sSteve Sabol liked the look (Sabol mentioned
that you could easily tell when the Steelers played),[8]
the players didn't, adding that they looked like clowns or Batman, which is likely where the "Batman"
rumors began. Due to primitive washing techniques at the time (as
well as NFL teams frequently reusing the uniforms, unlike today
where current athletic supplier Reebok gives teams new equipment every game),
the Steelers had trouble washing the uniforms because the gold
triangle faded easily. Rooney was even asked on a radio show in
Dallas when the team was playing the Cowboys on October 30, 1966 if
the team was wearing the uniforms for Halloween.[7]

The uniforms were retired after two seasons. The team has
mentioned publicly as recent as 2007 that they will never wear them
in a game again.[8]
However, in 2008, the team began to sell customized versions of the
jerseys on their official web site.[9]

Modern
classics

After just two years with the "Batman" uniforms, the current
uniform designs were introduced in 1968. The design was a
modernized version of the pre-1966 black design and consists of
gold pants and either black jerseys or white jerseys, except for
the 1970 and 1971 seasons when the Steelers wore white pants with
their white jerseys. After a two-year hiatus, the
Northwestern-style stripes returned for good, with the black
jerseys getting white stripes in the two gaps of the gold stripes
while the white jerseys got black outlines on the gold stripes.
Both variations have been heavily used in team apparel.

The helmet is solid black with a gold central stripe and small
white player numbers on the forehead. Last names were added to the
jerseys in 1970, as part of a new
NFL mandate resulting from the AFL-NFL merger (the
AFL teams had last names on the back of their jerseys). In 1997, the team switched
to rounded numbers on the jersey to match the number font (Futura
Condensed) on the helmets, and a Steelers logo was added to the
left side of the jersey.

Black at
home

The Steelers are one of a dwindling number of NFL franchises
that strictly wears its team color jerseys at home, always opting
for black. They are the only ones in the AFC North to practice this. The Cleveland
Browns have traditionally had on again/off again periods of
wearing white at home, while the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati
Bengals, like some other NFL teams, wear white in their home
opener before wearing their darker jerseys in their remaining home
games. The Steelers last wore white at home on a regular basis in
1969, Chuck Noll's first season as coach and the last year the team
played in Pitt
Stadium.

Because of the team's unofficial policy of always wearing their
black jerseys in home games, the team gained some notoriety when,
as the designated "home" team for Super Bowl XL, the team elected to wear
their white jerseys, becoming just the third NFL team to elect to
wear white as the "home" team in the Super Bowl. But while the other two teams
that have elected to wear white as the "home" team in the Super
Bowl (Dallas
and Washington) traditionally wear
white at home, a variety of reasons were rumored as to why the
Steelers elected to wear white in Super Bowl XL. Reasons included
the fact that the team wore white in all three playoff victories
that year (all on the road) to former head coach Bill Cowher's comments
that since it wasn't at Heinz Field, it was a road game (a
statement contradicted by the fact that ten years earlier in Super Bowl XXX,
Cowher's squad was the "home team" and chose to wear their black
jerseys away from Three Rivers Stadium, where they
had played both playoff games). However, it should be noted though
that the game took place in Detroit, which is
only a five hour drive from Pittsburgh and with the league
preferring to have the Super Bowl in subtropical or
Mediterranean climates or in
domed/retractable roof stadiums due to the winter weather, is
likely the closest the Steelers would have to a home game in a
Super Bowl in the foreseeable future. (Not surprisingly, there were
also an overwhelming number of Steelers fans at the game compared
to the number of supporters of their opponent, the Seattle
Seahawks. One ESPN.com columnist suggested that Steelers fans
outnumbered Seahawks fans by a ratio of 25 to 1.[10])

Throwback
uniforms

At a press conference on April 27, 2007, it was announced that
the Steelers would wear a throwback uniform for two home games
during the 2007 season, as part of the celebration of the Steelers'
75th Season. They were worn for the Steelers' home opener against
the Buffalo Bills on September 16 and again during the Monday Night
Football game on November 5 against the Baltimore Ravens. Both
games resulted in victories. The jersey is black with the numbers,
names and stripes all in gold and it also contains a 75th Season
logo on the right side of the upper chest part of the jersey. The
jersey is considered to be from the 1960 season. The pants are
white with a single gold stripe running down the length of the
outside of each leg, surrounded by thinner black stripes on either
side of the gold stripe. The helmets are gold with the Steelers
logo on the right side and a single black stripe running down the
center from front to back. The helmet was worn during the 1962
season, which was the first year that the present Steelers logo
began to appear on their helmets. The only two differences are that
the logo on the original helmet read 'Steel', whereas Steelers
appears on the helmet that the team wore for the two games in 2007
and that the face mask on this version of the helmet is black,
whereas the original face mask color on the gold helmet was gray.
The throwbacks, minus the "75th season" patch, are now officially
the team's alternate
uniform as of the 2008 season,[11] and
are usually worn for games that honor the team's alumni.[12]